Cut Down In Their Prime

I wonder if it's SWT's covert intention to gradually cut down all the mature trees growing on what used to be grouse moor? You certainly can't trust what they say. Several areas over the last 18 months have had the chain saw treatment. Two areas I asked questions about several years ago and was told there was no plan to cut trees just there. Now mature trees have been eliminated or rather left brutally plain to see with several feet of trunk projecting as if pressing home the lesson that all vegetation must obey the conservation agenda or else. I have requested a copy of SWT's Tree Felling Licence with conditions. Doubtless it will confirm SWT's carte blanche to lay waste what they want. My impression though is that the whole tree cutting operation is random, as if there's nothing else to do so "Let's go and cut some trees down" .

Much conservation in this country is farming. Here it's farming for heather - creating bits of grouse moor. Not very good farming either. Something's growing in the wrong place, well get rid of it. It must be a depressing job for anyone who thought they went into it to promote natural landscapes and vegetation.

The latest part of Blacka to suffer is Lenny Hill. Not long ago I was told that trees would not be cut here. Too late to bring that up now. I might have expected the copse of thin tightly packed birch to get thinning treatment.

But these were tall mature birches with a special role in the landscape. From the hill above the copse now looks isolated and faintly ridiculous like a shaving brush.